Lake Champlain ices over, pretty much, weather service says

Feb. 12, 2014

Lake Champlain is largely frozen over, according to the National Weather Service office in South Burlington. The last time the lake had this level of ice cover was 2007. This sunset view from last week shows only a narrow channel open in the ice west of Burlington, and it has since iced over. / ADAM SILVERMAN/FREE PRESS

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Free Press Staff

A high-resolution image from MODIS satellite of Lake Champlain taken Wednesday, Feb. 12. Aside from a few ice-free spots (shown by the red arrows) most of Lake Champlain is ice covered. / US National Weather Service Burlington VT

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Lake Champlain looks to be frozen over from one side to the other — but don’t try motoring across the ice to New York in your Humvee just yet. The meaning of “frozen over” is a bit imprecise.

Here’s what we know, according to the National Weather Service: High resolution MODIS satellite photos show ice pretty much everywhere on the lake, except for a few relatively small patches. That’s enough for National Weather Service meteorologist Andrew Loconto to offer a rough characterization: “99 percent frozen.”

This freeze-over likely was consummated Wednesday, he said, thanks in part to low temperatures overnight — 11 degrees below zero at Burlington International Airport in South Burlington.

“It’s the most ice we’ve seen since 2007,” Loconto said. That’s the last year the lake is believed to have frozen over.

Loconto cautioned that “frozen over” can mean different things. In the past, to some people, it might simply have meant that the Charlotte Ferry couldn’t get across the lake.

However defined, freeze-overs are less frequent than they used to be. A century ago, they supposedly happened annually, and in nearly every year through the 1940s, but less frequently after that, and reportedly only three times in the ‘90s.

On a Facebook page, the weather service posted a satellite photo of the lake with three arrows indicating “ice free spots,” with this caveat: “Our record of Lake Champlain fully freezing over comes from varied sources and several observers. So there’s potential for inaccuracy.”

The satellite photo doesn’t show how thick the ice is, either, so it might not be safe to retrace the ferry’s full passage on foot, much less by snowmobile. The lake may be in an uncommon condition, but common sense is still called for.